PowerDirector - Bitrate frustration! help really appreciated

[onlineart]

Hi

Hope someone can help - I have used AVS video editor for previous video projects, don't like it much, but I have found the settings I appear to need to produce my long videos in MP4 format and keep file sizes down and quality decent.

But I have now got "Powerdirector" which seems a much better program, but it wont allow me to use the same low bitrate settings that I set up in AVS.

I am trying to set the following -

MP4
1280 x 720
bitrate 1250 Kbps

But Powerdirector wont let me set a lower bitrate than 6000kbps and keep 1280 x 720 - which makes my file sizes huge in comparison.

any advice REALLY appreciated

[jman98]

The bitrate that you propose using on 720p video is unreasonably low. Some consumer programs won't let you shoot yourself in the foot and maybe Powerdirector simply refuses to do it because the bitrate is too low and the quality would be bad (you may not think so, but it's true).

Please explain exactly what your goal is, like you need to convert home camcorder video to 720p for some purpose, or whatever. Once we understand what you are trying to do and why you think you need such a low bitrate, you may better be able to get help. We have very very few members who use Powerdirector, so if you are lucky maybe one of them will respond if he knows a way to override the bitrate setting. If not, if we know what you want to do, maybe someone can suggest an alternative that will get your the bitrates you want.

[onlineart]

Thanks for the reply.

I am shooting video for my instructional video films. Which customers download and play on computers etc full screen.

each film is 1 1/2 to 2 hrs long. and I try to keep the file size below 1.5 GB

I have done them in the past in AVS video editor at 1280 x 720 and a bitrate of 1250 kbps (MP4) and that gives me a very good compromise between quality and file size, I know its not perfect image quality but files around 3gb + would just not be feasible for lots to download.

As you can see I am a real novice at this so really willing to learn

[_Al_]

Is it a screen capture video?

[onlineart]

No I shoot them using a Canon HD - HG20 camcorder in its second highest quality. Which might well be overkill - as mentioned I am real new to this and only done 2 films - hope I can show the preview on youtube. This will show the idea of what I am doing, of course my long videos have voice over etc -

youtube preview

If I am not allowed to show this could the moderator just delete my post please.

[_Al_]

I see, you might get away with lower bitrate for these tutorials, especially if you camcorder is on tripod.

If you already edited your video in Power Director, look if there is some lossless export available or uncompressed (but file will be huge).
Then encode that lossless or uncompressed video with handbrake or any x264 frontend., use 2pass and set average bitrate, or CRF with buffer limits (that is more advanced but just 1pass)

For next projects try other videoeditors with more versatile export settings, like Vegas Platinum.

[onlineart]

Thanks

I tried Vegas and it was super slow at rendering, slowest program I have ever used.

[Brainiac]

I am one of the few users of PowerDirector, but I do not use it for work for clients. I only use it for personal projects, and that is rare.
I did come across this post in Cyberlink's forum. It explains how to create a preset that allows you to override the default bitrate setting. It is for version 9, but still applies to the latest version. I tried it and it worked perfectly.

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/17939.page

Brainiac

[_Al_]

Thanks

I tried Vegas and it was super slow at rendering, slowest program I have ever used.

You mean encoder is slow, not program. Time of encoding depends on settings that sets algorithms to do their job.

But anyway Brainiac brought solution for you, supposedly, there is a way to create your own preset for Power Director.

[onlineart]

I find Sony movie studio to be the slowest at rendering / encoding of all the programs I have used unfortunately.

Brainiac - that worked PERFECTLY - thanks you VERY much for taking the time to post the answer

Great forum - I will learn a lot here I think

[jman98]

Great forum - I will learn a lot here I think

If you end up being one of those members who never reads the forums and only posts when he has a problem then you won't. You'll just be yet another member who shows up once or twice a year to ask a question but unfortunately the question will be about something we've discussed a bunch of times here but since you never read the forums, you won't know that. You'll still probably get help, but sometimes it will be too late. Like for example we have discussed a lot about DVD brand media quality and we'll still get posts from some guy who joined 8 years ago and posted like 4 times over that period and now he wants to know why his Ritek brand DVD+R DL discs he bought at his local office supply store are coasters when we've been warning people for years not to buy them. You can learn a lot here, sometimes by just reading posts of interest, but if you only come here when you have problems, you won't.